You're Best Forgotten
by Ice Cube1
Summary: Killian has been left behind in the Underworld, but he isn't quite ready to move on. First he has to find the strength to leave the cave that should have held his salvation.
_You see, you'd love to run home, but you know you ain't got one_

 _Cuz you're livin' in a world that you're best forgotten, around here_

* * *

Killian can't tell how long he stands at the bottom of the elevator shaft, staring up into the darkness and imagining that he can still hear her choked sobs. His cheek burns with his tears and hers mingled on his skin. His lips sting where he had gotten his last taste of her. His fingers still tingle with the feel of her – his calluses scraping along the soft skin of her palm and down her own fingers. The futility of trying to hold on just a second longer, of balancing on his toes until he realized that he was trying to keep her with him. To pull her back to his side where they could keep each other safe.

But that's why he sent her back to her family.

His heart – or the memory of it since his actual body is rotting away in Storybrooke, he supposes – is shattering more and more with every second. Something that is gone and no longer beating shouldn't be able to cause this much anguish, he thinks distractedly as he sinks to his knees under the weight of the pain.

But the pain isn't for what he's lost. Oh no.

It's for what Emma has lost. What he has cost her. There's a piece of her heart left behind with him, he knows, a piece of her soul that she will never recover. That day on the beanstalk, he had told her he recognized the look of someone who's been left alone - someone who's been abandoned. He had seen that look fade over the years, and he likes to think that that was partly because of him.

Now? Now he knows that even if she holds to her promise, that look in her eyes will be back. She's been left again, and it's because of him. That hurts far more than his own predicament.

He's no stranger to being left behind, himself. It's more than he deserves for forgetting that villains don't get happy endings. He'd wanted Emma to be his - oh how he'd wanted it. He still wants it. He wants to push himself off the ground, stomp on the small puddle in the dirt where his tears have gathered, and call the elevator back down to him. He wants to race after Emma, pull her into his arms for one more kiss, hold her for just a moment longer.

He was a selfish pirate for far too long.

But Emma keeps telling him that he's a hero now. And maybe he's starting to be, because while he does shove against the ground until his knees lock and hold him upright once more, he doesn't look for a way out.

Not yet.

Not until he's sure that she has gone.

He can't say goodbye again.

He doesn't have the strength to push her away from him again. He's trying, always trying for his Swan, but he's just not that good a man.

Killian thinks of her, then. He had told her she didn't have to worry about him. He had promised her that he was a survivor. He had reassured her time and again that he wouldn't be just another man in her life who leaves her. He had showed her a future where they could be happy. Together.

It's why he had begged that last promise from her, after all.

He saw it in her eyes when she realized he was going to break his oath to her. She had let him climb the walls of her fortress and abscond with her heart like the pirate he had become. Emma's armor was strong, nigh on impenetrable. To have been allowed a place beneath it was the mark of the utmost level of trust.

And he had squandered it.

Killian had done the one thing to his Swan that he had promised to himself never to do.

He had broken her with his love.

* * *

It's some time later when the ground beneath his feet stills and he can feel it in his very being. She is beyond his reach now, and all that is left of her is the promise she's holding him to.

Killian will honor her request, but not just yet.

He isn't quite ready to follow through.

Time is meaningless here, he had learned that when Hades was trying to torture the hope out of him. The god of the Underworld shouldn't have tried to keep Killian and Emma apart for so long - letting them find each other and lose one another had done far more to annihilate any hope he had of being happy ever again than fractures, lacerations, and bruises could have accomplished.

He is happy to languish here for an eternity or two, but it seems that the Fates have other plans for him. The clang of the elevator car startles him, but he knows when he is being called. It is time to leave this farce of hope behind and make his way elsewhere.

Killian would have to be blind to miss Henry's storybook. He's not sure he has the strength to help all these people find their happiness, not when his only shot at it has gone where he cannot follow. But he owes a concerted effort to the boy he couldn't say goodbye to. He has to try - for Henry, for Bae's memory wrapped up in the teenager, for...for what Emma would have wanted.

It all comes back to her.

He means to finish his new quest post haste. He may owe it to Henry, but his nonexistent heart can only take so much. Then the first person he's set to find is elusive, and the next chunk of them are overjoyed at his help and every hug, every pat on the back, every blinding grin bows his shoulders further.

He's inside the doors to the dimly lit tavern before he realizes where he's landed.

He doesn't have to know that this is Liam's bar to see the little reminders of his older brother everywhere. And Killian breaks just a little bit more thoroughly.

The dark room is empty now, but he can still feel Liam's presence everywhere. And it hurts. It hurts to know that this is what Hades had done to the man who had raised him, saved him. Loved him.

How many times did Liam have to drag him out of a place like this? How many times did he find Killian passed out in an alley, lucky to have all his limbs still attached and his meager savings in his pocket? How many times did Liam have to bite his tongue as he watched his little brother destroy himself to cope with all of the weight of loss and slavery on his slim shoulders?

For Hades to have given Liam a bar to tend of all things was the cruelest type of punishment. Apparently the god of the Underworld held a grudge against Liam for having to make a trip out of his realm in order to claim the souls of Silver's crew.

But it serves its purpose now as Killian hops over the counter, rummages through the bottles until he finds all the different types of rum, and proceeds to do his best to empty the bottles.

What good is being dead if you worry about alcohol tolerance?

Killian intends to test the limits of this whole – being dead – thing. He passes out somewhere long after his tolerance would have been breached, wakes up with a hangover sprawled on the ground under the bar, and gets up to try again.

He has only just poured his first drink when a hand covers his own.

It is large, but the man it is attached to is not overly so. Killian just glares at him and tears his hand free.

"'S the only one, I got, Mate. So hands off." He reaches for his tumbler again, downing the liquid and relishing the burn in his throat. He reaches for the bottle again when his fingers clasp empty air.

There is no longer a single bottle of alcohol in the entire bar. Killian rolls his eyes.

"What do you want?"

The man smiles at him, but the expression does nothing to placate the anger in his stomach. He just wants to forget for a little while, then he'll go find his way to his brother's side.

He just needs to work up a little more courage first, is all.

The man waves his hand and Killian is suddenly standing in the cemetery. He has no more use for magic wielders, and he tries to say so when a portal opens in front of him.

"I've been watching you since my brother weaseled his way out of his punishment. You're quite good at finishing what you set out to do. So I've got a proposition for you." This must be another god, and Zeus at that, but Killian is less than impressed.

"Made my fair share of deals in my lifetime, mate. Only have one left to finish, and I'm pretty sure this isn't the way to the bridge I'm looking for." Killian turns to go and isn't surprised when his feet won't obey him.

"Not even if the deal means you can be back at your True Love's side in the time it takes you to walk from here to there?" Zeus waves his hand and the swirling maelstrom and the red mandala resolves into an image of Emma. Killian can see her standing over a fresh grave, his flask barely held in her outstretched fingers.

It looks like he could reach out and touch her.

Killian turns resolutely away, shaking his head even as tears track down his cheeks again. He wants nothing more than to run to her side, envelop her in his arms and bury her in the warmth of his embrace.

"I can't."

Zeus closed the portal and looked confused. "You don't even know what I'm offering."

Killian's jaw clenches shut so hard that the muscles twitch. He longs to wrap his arms around himself and try to squeeze out the pain at seeing her again. "Whatever it is, I've already left her. We said our goodbyes, mate. I can't do that to her again. I won't."

He doesn't allow the god another word before he stomps away from the graves. He needs more rum.

Zeus leaves him alone for a while, but Killian can sense that he's nearby. He can't find his way back to the bridge, no matter how hard he tries, and it makes him angry. He promised Emma he would move on, and now some other power-hungry cretin is controlling him.

He has been controlled too often in his long, long life.

Only comforted by the fact that he is not truly breaking his promise to Emma – his unfinished business is no longer her after all, Killian wanders the streets, continuing Henry's task until he downs the entirety of his current bottle and makes his way back for more.

At least Zeus returned the bottles of rum to Liam's establishment.

It feels like eons later when Zeus summons him back to the cemetery once more. The portal is there, Emma is there, but Killian's stance hasn't changed.

"No." He waits patiently. Centuries of existence taught him that virtue, and it comes in handy now.

"Now hear me out," Zeus cajoles, his hands raised in supplication. "We both want the same thing. You aren't meant to be away from her side. She needs you and you need her. Rumplestiltskin is the one who altered those plans, but I have the power to fix that. I _will_ send you back to her. As you were the day you died – free of the darkness and with a healthy body to grow old in. All I need you to do is to send my brother back here. A life for a life. He cheated you out of that. You do that and you can both find your happy endings as great-grandparents sitting on rocking chairs watching the sunset over the ocean you love so much."

"No." Killian turns away again. Hades is more shrewd than Rumplestiltskin, more dangerous than any other villain he has ever faced. If he fails…if he can't uphold his end of the deal and Zeus calls him back to the Underworld in punishment?

He can't shatter Emma's heart again.

Not even if it means he gets an instant to feel her arms wrap around him.

He can't. He won't.

Neither of them would survive it.

* * *

It seems he has stumped Zeus, for the god leaves him be for a good long while. Killian comes across Cruella a few times, trading barbs and insults as she tries to thwart him at every turn. He does his best not to dwell on what he has given up again. The chance that they were successful? It's heady. He has never known his Swan to fail until just recently in the Underworld, but he can't assume the risk for this. Not even if it means…

Well, there's no use thinking about it, he muses, handing a couple their unfinished business and an assurance that their son is doing perfectly well in Storybrooke. Killian neglects to mention that he almost tortured the cricket at one point in their relationship.

He has just handed off their story when he feels the familiar stirrings of magic around him.

He is back in the cemetery for the third time since Emma had left, and he's beyond incensed at this point.

"I'm not going to change my mind, you know. Your brother tried to break me, and he couldn't even come close. You don't have a chance in Hell." Killian gestures around himself in wry irony.

Zeus holds out pages from a storybook. Killian can already tell that these are not pages that Henry has drawn. These are older, ripped from a book rather than not yet bound.

They are the missing pages that Liam had stolen.

"Take them. If I ever have a hope of trapping Hades back down here, then your Love and her family need them. I can't bring them myself, so you get a free pass. No strings attached, no caveats or addendums. This is a deal you _can_ accept. Bring those pages to Emma and you can have all the things I promised you. If you defeat my brother, if you don't, all you will need is True Love's Kiss and your life is yours. I trust you can find these terms amenable?" Zeus is smiling smugly, and Killian wants to punch the grin from his lips, but the pull of Emma's love is stronger.

His hand is shaking as he accepts the pages. The top one is full of flowing script, and there is a line for his signature.

 ** _I, Killian Jones, do accept the terms of the accord. That on this day I will return to the land of the living and hand the attached pages to one, Emma Swan. In return, I will be granted my life in its entirety._**

There is no fine print, no lengthy explanation or legal wording.

A pen appears in mid-air, and it's all he can do to drop the contract on the nearest headstone and scribble his name in elegant script.

Tears track down his face as Zeus accepts the parchment with a flourish. Killian turns in a full circle before he sees the portal open, and he is through it before he can fully process. He is on his way home.

* * *

He finds her alone, and he can see by the slump of her shoulders that she is still grieving him. He has no idea how long it has been for her, but he doesn't care. All he cares about is how good, how right, the feel of her in his arms will be. He can't wait to kiss her, to embrace her, to try and hold her so close that they become one and can never be separated again.

He can't wait for it, and so there is no flowery speech, no pithy one-liner or witty remark. There is only one word, a benediction as the world rights itself around him. He is home when he calls out,

"Emma."


End file.
